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  Climate Change The Trishuli River flows in the aftermath of floods near the Nepal-China border at the village of Syabrubesi in Nepal’s district of Rasuwa on August 31, 2026. Prabin Ranabhat/Getty Images Nepal’s deadly debris avalanche is a warning for the rest of the world Avalanches like the one that devastated parts of Nepal and Tibet are becoming more common thanks to climate change. Here’s where else is at risk Jackie Flynn Mogensen | September 1, 2026 The death toll from the catastrophic floods that swept through parts of Nepal and Tibet last week has risen beyond 1,000 people, while thousands of people remain missing. Among them are hundreds of workers believed to be stuck inside large underground tunnels connected to hydroelectric power plants. As the rescue mission continues, researchers warn that disasters like this could become more common all over the planet as a result of climate change. Part of what made this disaster so deadly was its suddenness. Experts believe...
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  How to under stand the current puzzle in bonds and equities  Financial Times Europe 2 Sep 2026 Matt King Matt King is a macro and credit strategist and founder of Satori Insight  The two most strik ing moves in mar kets this year are the extent of the rise in bond yields and the strength and breadth of the equity rally. The biggest puzzle is why the first has not destabil ised the second. Bulls attrib ute both to the same thing: the remark able surge in cor por ate profits. Higher yields, on this read ing, are just a reflec tion of higher expect a tions for longrun growth on the back of the AI invest ment boom. If earn ings can remain above his tor ical norms, equit ies are there fore inex pens ive. The more optim istic go fur ther still, expect ing the growth to reduce future gov ern ment defi cits. This nar rat ive has genu ine merit, inso far as the bond move has come in real yields, and not infla tion expect a tions priced into mar kets. But it fails three tests. It...
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  The wheels fall off the US world order  Trump believes there are no allies, only satellites, and that power is Washington’s alone to wield  Financial Times Europe 2 Sep 2026 Mar tin Wolf Eco nom ics mar tin.wolf@ft.com  On August 16, Don ald Trump announced a sub stan tial reduc tion in joint mil it ary exer cises with South Korea. On August 19, he announced what came, five days later, to be called “Oper a tion Eco nomic Out cast” against Iran, defined as an effort to “sever the eco nomic life lines that sus tain the Ira nian regime”. On August 21, US trade talks with Canada col lapsed, after the Amer ic ans made new demands that would limit Canada’s free dom to make trade deals with other coun tries and keep its rules pro tect ing the French lan guage. On August 28, Trump announced “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” which would give the US 55 per cent con trol of the out put of a new Venezuelan com pany that would develop 17 fields with a “proven poten tial”...
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  Grid crunch dims growth pro spects for Dutch city  Utrecht faces strict lim its on elec tri city use as bloc struggles with shift from fossil fuels  Financial Times Europe 1 Sep 2026 IAN JOHNSTON — UTRECHT  In Europe’s sum mer heat, Utrecht’s lib rar ies face an unusual dilemma: either power their air con di tion ers or escal at ors. Res id ents, busi nesses and pub lic ser vices face strict lim its on elec tri city use in the Dutch city, less than 30 miles south of Ams ter dam, as the power grid is severely con ges ted. Since July 1, the grid oper ator has frozen new con nec tions to avoid power cuts. Utrecht’s mayor Sharon Dijksma fears the crisis could last for years, with dire eco nomic con sequences for the Neth er lands’ fast est-grow ing city. Fewer hous ing projects can be developed, while plans to elec trify local industry and install faster char gers for elec tric vehicles are on hold. Utrecht’s pre dic a ment could become the norm across the EU unless go...
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  Bland new world: is AI making us all think the same? Researchers worry that generative AI is homogenizing culture and cognition. Illustration: Paweł Jońca Zhivar Sourati often gets déjà vu while perusing recent research in his field of computer science. “I read papers and I’m like, ‘I’ve seen this paper before,’” he says. Everything’s looking kind of the same, shorn of individual quirks, says Sourati, who is a PhD student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Sourati suspects artificial intelligence is to blame. Because people are increasingly relying on large language models (LLMs), their writing is growing more similar , he suggests. Now, Sourati and other researchers are putting their anecdotal observations to the test by exploring how generative AI (genAI) — systems that create text, images and other output — might be homogenizing both culture and cognition. In a March paper, he and his co-authors noted that this phenomenon is similar to the concept of ‘Mc...
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  Russia Trapped in Strategic Mismatch BY YAROSLAV TROFIMOV Russia faces a fundamental asymmetry as it seeks to beat Ukraine into submission with intensifying airstrikes on shopping malls, power stations, ports and other infrastructure. Kyiv can rely on a secure hinterland beyond its borders—its European neighbors— for economic resilience and for military logistics. The Kremlin, whose refineries, ports and defense industries are also under attack by Ukrainian missiles and drones, has no such backup. Hits to Russia’s militarized economy translate more directly into damage to the country’s ability to keep the war going. This lopsided geopolitical setup offsets, to a significant degree, Russia’s advantage in firepower. It has also become a reason driving what Western officials said is a widening Russian campaign of sabotage, hacking and other hybrid operations aimed at intimidating European leaders and voters. Warning Russia against taking hostilities to North Atlantic Treaty Organi...
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Warsh moves beyond latest data reaction to chart a for ward-looking path for Fed at Jackson Hole  Financial Times Europe 1 Sep 2026 Mohamed El-Erian is the Rene M Kern pro fessor of prac tice at Whar ton School, chief eco nomic adviser at A li anz and chair of Gramercy Funds Man age ment Mohamed El-Erian  Kevin Warsh delivered his first speech at the annual Jack son Hole cent ral bank ing con fer ence as the new chair of the Fed eral Reserve under the pres sure of remark ably high and unusu ally var ied expect a tions. Yet in a power ful half-hour present a tion, he went a long way towards assuaging doubts by deftly nav ig at ing both short- and long-term issues. That’s the good news. Less good is that the imme di ate media and mar ket focus has been on the less con sequen tial part of his speech. We should not under es tim ate the tricky task Warsh faced in the run-up to his Fri day speech: strik ing the right bal ance in respond ing to cri ti cisms about the mar ket’s lack o...
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